


The Lights That Burn (Walk Towards Them)

by TheSoggySchuyler4



Series: We Walk This Earth United [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23185300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoggySchuyler4/pseuds/TheSoggySchuyler4
Summary: Prequel to 'Tokens of Love'Clint becomes Hawkeye. He's not sure that's a good thing.
Series: We Walk This Earth United [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638472
Kudos: 18





	The Lights That Burn (Walk Towards Them)

Clint liked Magda at once. She was plump and warm, and she held him in her arms and cooed at him. Magda was what Clint imagined a proper mother might be; doting and soft. He wanted to avoid Charlie, but Barney dragged him over and made Clint shake his hand. Charlie was big and brutish, and he reminded Clint of dark nights cowering under his bed because dad was home. Clint tried very hard not to flinch. He wasn’t so sure he succeeded.

Charlie didn’t want Clint there. He’d been pleased about Barney, but Barney played all sorts of sports, and was big and muscular, with just the right dash of charisma. Everybody wanted Barney. Clint was still the runt of his class; not yet rid of his baby fat, and certainly not athletic enough to be any use. He was unapologetically clumsy too, and dad had always hated that. Charlie scrutinised him.

“You strong like your brother, boy?” Clint was not. He shook his head, figuring honesty was the best approach. Barney elbowed him, and Clint wondered what he was supposed to say. He _wasn’t_ strong. Had Barney expected him to lie?

“Clint’s a great shot,” Barney vouched for him, and Clint tried not to react, because he really wasn’t, “And he’s good with animals. You could set him to mucking out pens or summin’.” Clint glanced over at the lion pens and hoped his fear wasn’t obvious on his face. He loved animals, and was always sneaking strays home, but Lions could eat him. Starving bedraggled kittens weren’t very scary. Charlie snorted.

“Trickshot needs an assistant. Hear tha’ boy? You’ll carry Trickshot’s things and do anything he asks, alrigh’? An’ I don’t wanna see hide or hair of ye’ unless I ask, got it?” He barked.

Clint nodded furiously, though he wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. He just hoped Trickshot was nice.

Trickshot was not nice. He wasn’t as bad as Charlie, but he was always drunk, and Clint had learnt early on never to trust a drunk. The man was sharp as a knife, with bony shoulders and a pointy angry looking face. His words were sharp too, and they stung. He said mean things to Clint. Sometimes the words were almost worse than dad’s fists, and that was when Clint would sneak away to Barney’s trailer and hide there.

Trickshot worked mainly with a bow and arrow, and when he wasn’t busy, he taught Clint what he knew. Clint liked the feel of the bow in his hand, and he liked the control it gave him. The bow was a weapon. It could protect Clint from the bad things.

He lost the baby fat within only a few weeks. There wasn’t much food to go around, so Clint grew thin and wiry instead. By the time he turned eight, Barney said he looked like a proper man. Clint didn’t really understand what that meant, but the others laughed, so Clint did too. He developed muscles too, from lifting heavy objects and firing his bow. Magda said he’d be as good as Trickshot soon, but Clint wasn’t sure that was a good thing. Trickshot got so angry when anyone said that, like Clint might take his job.

* * *

Things went wrong on the approach to Clint’s ninth birthday. He’d been counting down the days, knowing Barney had promised to take him to the beach as a special treat. But then Trickshot got sick, and everything fell apart.

Trickshot was an important part of the routine. He set the scene, and drew the audience in. The routine didn’t work without him. The cues would be all messed up. This was what Clint was thinking when he discovered Trickshot half dead outside his trailer. Magda said it was alcohol poisoning, and she vanished inside the trailer with him for a long time. She insisted he’d be fine, but he couldn’t perform. Charlie was furious. The rest of the performers panicked.

“Clint could do it.” Barney offered into the chaos.

Charlie liked to pretend Clint didn’t exist. Clint was perfectly happy with that arrangement. He’d pretend Charlie didn’t exist too, except he spent most of his time actively avoiding the angry ringleader. It’s hard to forget someone exists when you think about them constantly. Charlie scoffed in what sounded like disgust.

“Can the runt even shoot?”

It seemed that rest of them were confident enough that Barney was sent to grab a bow and some arrows. Magda ushered Clint into the performer’s tent and handed him the equipment.

“You know the routine by now?” she asked impatiently. Clint eyed Charlie, who was glaring at him, and nodded absently. Trickshot had made him practice the routine several times so he could ascertain what could be improved in his own actions. Now, Clint realised, the practice had another key benefit. He took the bow and aimed, finishing the routine with three handsprings and a shot that perfectly clipped Magda’s feathered hat. She laughed in delight.

“How precious,” Dekka, one of the trapeze artists, cooed from her ladder.

Clint looked over at Charlie. He wasn’t smiling, but he did look impressed.

“Marco, “He called, “Get this boy a costume. And someone find him a stage name.”

In the end, it was Lizzie-Lou, an elephant rider, who though up the moniker Hawkeye. She was from Tennessee and said the name meant ‘Man of Good Sight’. Charlie agreed that it was just quirky enough to work. Clint couldn’t help the pride he felt whenever someone called him that.

* * *

Trickshot didn’t wasn’t happy about the change when he recovered. Apparently, people had really liked Clint’s performance, and Charlie decided that he would be repeating it once or twice a week. There was a lot of yelling following that announcement, and Clint hid beneath Barney’s trailer and waited for it to go quiet again. He didn’t dare go back to Trickshot’s trailer and spent the night out in the cold.

After that, Trickshot was always bitter towards him, always angry. Clint avoided him as much as he could and took to sleeping with the animals. He wasn’t scared of the lions anymore, after Magda had shown him how they had no teeth. Clint had vomited after seeing those poor bloody gums, but at least it made him feel safer. He got used to doing the performances, and even became more confident, adding in little tricks or flips to make things more interesting. Trickshot hated that, but he was too old to pull off the same material.

One thing that changed drastically was Barney. He had always been the big brother- the strong one, Clint’s truest protector- but that gradually changed as the years went by. As they grew, Clint began to recognise the same behaviours that he had always seen in dad. Barney yelled slurs at Clint, threw heavy objects and taunted Clint when they made contact. Once Barney had turned fifteen, he began drinking heavily, and suddenly nowhere was safe. Clint learnt to keep to the shadows, to protect himself.

“Oy, Clint, ge’ over here.” Barney was drunk. Clint was good at recognising the signs now- the slurred voice, uneven footing, cloudy eyes. He was just barely twelve and had quickly found that getting older didn’t alleviate the fear. He was still scared. Always scared. He shuffled forwards, keeping his eyes on the dusty ground. Jaser, the hulking weightlifter from Ethiopia, and Miriam, one of the dancers, stood on ether side of Barney, both sneering at him with a kind of hatred that made his blood run cold.

“We got a task for you.” Jaser told him. Miriam tossed Clint’s bow and arrow quiver at him and Clint fumbled to grab them before the arrows could spill all over the ground. He waited silently, correctly guessing that they weren’t expecting him to agree or disagree. The power balance was clear. He would do as he was told, or he would be punished.

“Go into the convenience store,” Barney instructed him, jerking his head towards the corresponding town, “And steal us a coupl’a beers. Subtle, go’ it? No funny business.”

Clint nodded quickly, racing off before they could beat him up. He hid the bow and quiver in his favourite spot and set off for the town, praying he could actually do this. He was wearing Emilio’s spare trench coat; the one that was technically too big for him but was the only one he’d been able to borrow. It had huge pockets, and Clint knew he could use that to his advantage.

He walked into the store as calmly as he could manage, heading straight for the alcohol aisle as soon as he was sure it was empty. Barney had shown him how to pickpocket before and he did it quickly and easily, buying himself some sweets with a few coins he found in one of the pockets at the same time. Emilio wouldn’t miss them. Besides, it looked less suspicious when you actually brought something.

Barney and his friends were nowhere to be found when Clint returned, so he went to the archery range and practiced some tricks whilst he waited. They approached him late in the evening, Jaser wordlessly taking the beers, whilst Miriam pinched his arm until it went purple. She had a malicious glint In her eye, and Clint couldn’t help wondering how far she would push it if given the chance.

“We’ll be using you again.” Barney warned him, and then they were gone. Clint shivered. He didn’t want to know what Barney had meant by that.

* * *

What Barney had meant, Clint soon discovered, was that he would be their new ‘weapon’. Anytime they went somewhere, they would drag Clint out into the and force him to shoot people for money. He used his bow a couple of times, biting down the bile that rose in his throat, but then Barney decided it was too conspicuous. They gave him a gun instead, taught him to shoot to kill, and that was that. In a way, Clint was glad they hadn’t made him use his bow. He didn’t want the only thing he was actually good at to be so tainted with death.

Clint knew he was a murderer. He wasn’t stupid. None of those people deserved to die. Barney-

Barney _did_. Barney was bad. Clint was just scared. He hadn’t wanted to. He felt sick to his stomach every time the bullet rang out. Another body to add to his list. With every death, Clint marked a line on the wall in the lion’s den. Too many to count. 

And then they came home.

Clint didn’t know where they were at first. The circus moved around so much that he had very little sense of direction. It was probably better that way- no way of knowing where all those people had died. Better to consider them to be left in some remote alleyway, never to be heard from again. Maybe it was because it was home that made it so different. The town was only a few over from their own, a quiet runty little place that saw very little crime. The victim was a teenage boy, dressed in nice clothes, with probably about $100 in his wallet. A good find. Barney looked pleased. The boy was cornered and scared, an easy victim. Clint probably could have killed him without a fuss. No mess, no backlash. Instead, Clint took one look at the boy, barely older than himself, and knew he couldn’t take that shot.

He lifted the gun, shaking horribly and fired. Barney let out a cry of anguish, grabbing his shoulder and stumbled towards Clint swearing angrily at him. Clint darted out of the way, firing again. This one hit Barney’s stomach, and oh God that was a lot of blood. The other boy whimpered and raced away, leaving his wallet discarded on the floor. Thinking quickly, Clint grabbed the wallet and tossed the gun at the wall.

There was a signpost. Directions to the next town. Taking a shaky breath, Clint started walking. It would take hours, he knew, but that was his best option. He couldn’t let them find him.

Clint walked for what felt like days. He was hungry, exhausted and so shaken that it was difficult to focus on walking in a straight line. At several points he just started crying, and then he could barely see at all. He was so out of it that he didn’t even hear the car until it was too late.

“What’ya doin’ out here boy?” Clint jerked at the rough but friendly sounding voice. He could hardly remember what a kind voice even sounded like, but he knew this was one. He opened his mouth to answer but found the words choking in his throat. He couldn’t _speak_.

“Woah! Okay, I’m calling this in. You got a name, boy?”

Through his tears, Clint realised that the guy was a police officer. His partner was sat in the driver’s seat of their police car, looking concerned.

“C-Clint” He stammered out, getting up before the officer could attempt to help him. They didn’t seem to know that he had maybe just killed his own brother. They just seemed kind. He didn’t know how to deal with that.

“Okay, Clint. We’re not too far out from Waverly. My partner and I are going to take you over the police station there. That alrigh’?

Clint nodded blearily. In all honesty, he was too tired to care. He just wanted to sleep.

* * *

Clint woke to voices filtering in and out.

“-ID’d him ... Get this, he … brother ran away…“

“Call…Mom…no…”

“Try again. She lives nearby. Probably working.”

The final voice sounded familiar, and Clint realised it was the guy who had picked him up. He didn’t point out the fact that ma was more likely to be high or drunk than working. It didn’t matter either way. He was fairly sure they were so caught up on the fact that they’d found him that they weren’t asking about barney. That was the most important thing. Anything else didn’t matter.

“Sarge. Mrs Barton’s here. Says she got a call about her son?”

Clint sat up. It was time to go home. Time to stop being Hawkeye, at least for a bit. Time to be a son again. The lights around him seemed to burn into his eyes but he embraced it. The light was good. The light meant life. He walked towards them.


End file.
